Comparison

[Guest T.Verhoeven]

Hello,

I finally purchased a ZTE Blade.

After looking around for a suitable rom to put on my device, I can't decide which one it will be.

Since I like to do things good the first time, I don't want to try out all the roms.

I have been looking for a few hours now to find a comparison of the roms, but I can't seem to find one.

I have narrowed it down to 5 options, all with their pro's and cons:

Moldovan - Quick and very clean, no needless options.

Swedish Snow (2.3) - A copy/newer version of Moldovan.

Cyanogen - A bit slow, but more options (nowhere I can find which options are in this rom, that aren't in others).

Blue Ginger - Better 3g battery life (I always have 3g on).

Ginger Stir Fry - Fast, but not as fast as Moldovan.

Things I expect from a custom rom:

Enable tethering for my MacBook Pro

Better battery life

That it is faster then the stock rom

Things I am a bit worried about:

Stability.

I want everything to work, with little to no crashes.

Which rom suits my needs the best? I don't care about overclocking.

Edited February 10, 2012 by T.Verhoeven

[Guest Grain]

You can quite safely assume that "rom X has better battery life than rom Y" statements in this forum are BOGUS. Have a look at the Blade FAQ linked to in this post's footer.

Cyanogen is not slow; its ADW Launcher is a bit slow on the Blade and people keep confusing these two completely separate facts. Install another launcher (Launcher Pro or Gingerbread Launcher) and everything's fine.

[Guest raverrr]

Have you thought of a 2.2 ROM? Swedish spring rls5 is bomb proof.

[Guest T.Verhoeven]

Have you thought of a 2.2 ROM? Swedish spring rls5 is bomb proof.

I thought 2.3 was faster then 2.2?

[Guest raverrr]

it is but not by far. I was thinking more of the reliability.

[Guest DrPaua]

I've used CyanogenMod a long time and thought it was time for another ROM - I'm waiting for a MIUIsh one like this one - atm I'm using Fish'N'Chips which is a lot faster than CM (CM for itself is a lot faster than the Original which came with the Blade). And I've tried other ROMs occassionally but no one could convince me using for a longer time.

What I have only seen in CM and nowhere else is to change the pics of the icons - one by one - and their labels.

[Guest agpoli]

The most stable ROMs are based on the official ZTE ROMs, the newest one of them is the Swedish Snow.

It contains all what you need, great stability, great performance and great battery life.

Edit: wrong ROM name...

Edited February 10, 2012 by agpoli

[Guest downloader50]

The most stable ROMs are based on the official ZTE ROMs, the newest one of them is the Swedish Spring.

It contains all what you need, great stability, great performance and great battery life.

+1 from me a great fast rom with good battery lifein my oinion Cyanogen is OK but all the needless extras eat battery life and spring has everything that is usefull included

Edited February 10, 2012 by downloader50

[Guest KonstaT]

Have you thought of a 2.2 ROM? Swedish spring rls5 is bomb proof.

Swedish Spring was great, but I wouldn't recommend froyo ROMs anymore just because of the security issues.

Are you saying that official ZTE gingerbreads are somehow unstable? ZTE Blade is sold in Sweden with gingerbread.

The most stable ROMs are based on the official ZTE ROMs, the newest one of them is the Swedish Spring.

It contains all what you need, great stability, great performance and great battery life.

I think you meant Swedish Snow. ;)

[Guest agpoli]

I think you meant Swedish Snow. ;)

Ooooops! Edited my post to avoid confusion, I wanted to wrote Snow of course

[Guest raverrr]

Swedish Spring was great, but I wouldn't recommend froyo ROMs anymore just because of the security issues.

Are you saying that official ZTE gingerbreads are somehow unstable? ZTE Blade is sold in Sweden with gingerbread.

na that's not what I meant. I just remember being on Swedish spring and never having even the slightest issue. If security is an issue tho maybe best to stick to more recent roms.

[Guest T.Verhoeven]

After reading your messages I've narrowed it down to two roms: Cyanogen or Swedish Snow (if the last one is as stable as Moldovan). Thanks for your help so far guys/girls!

[Guest Grain]

In terms of for example security updates, Cyanogen is pretty much the only way to go. Swedish Snow will not get any significant updates and will be forgotten in half a year - no offense to KonstaT but that's just the way it is with modified stock roms, see Japanese Jellyfish, Swedish Spring, and so on. With Cyanogen there's at least some chance this doesn't happen.

[Guest KonstaT]

In terms of for example security updates, Cyanogen is pretty much the only way to go. Swedish Snow will not get any significant updates and will be forgotten in half a year - no offense to KonstaT but that's just the way it is with modified stock roms, see Japanese Jellyfish, Swedish Spring, and so on. With Cyanogen there's at least some chance this doesn't happen.

Well, that argument is not completely valid because you'll soon be in the same boat even using CM7. CM7.2-RC1 is just about to be released and it won't take long until CM7 goes final (couple of months maybe?). After that no security update (or any other update) will find it's way into CM7. When talking about froyo, Google released android 2.2.3 with security updates last november and CM6 hadn't excisted in six months at that point anymore.

You are right about the ageing of modified ZTE stock ROMs. Moldovan 'lasted' only about three months. :P There still isn't anything wrong with it, it just isn't the most up to date version of stock based ROMs anymore. This will happen every time ZTE releases a newer version and every time someone makes it into a custom if it's worth it. :) These ROMs are still based on official releases and huge improvement if you think that your phone was originally sold with android 2.1.

[Guest Grain]

When talking about froyo, Google released android 2.2.3 with security updates last november and CM6 hadn't excisted in six months at that point anymore.

Well, I guess CM7 supported pretty much all phones previously supported by CM6, right? So there was no good reason to keep CM6. With CM9 vs. CM7 that will likely be a different story so perhaps CM7 might last a bit longer. At least that would be sensible. ;)

[Guest JolyonS]

You can quite safely assume that "rom X has better battery life than rom Y" statements in this forum are BOGUS.

When the first Stir Fry ROMs came out they provided better battery life than the CyanogenMod build available at the same time - this was tested by several of us using same application load and same usage patterns on each.

The later releases of the Stir Fry ROMs were less superior to subsequent CyanogenMods and the current state of affairs with CM is perfectly adequate as far as battery life is concerned - I'd be surprised to find it significantly outperformed by any of the other available ROMs.

[Guest Grain]

I guess later releases of the Stir Fry ROMs seemed less superior because either the batteries of the people testing aged (often not taken into consideration) or people's usage pattern changed ("Hey, I found that cool twitter app!").

After N85 (May 2011) - which fixed an audio-related drain bug - there were no major changes concerning battery life in CM7 as far as I know, apart from some short intermezzo with FM radio drain bugs in June 2011.